Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2011, Vol. 101, No. 1, 109 –128

© 2011 American Psychological Association
0022-3514/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0022530

Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists andSustains Gender Inequality
Danielle Gaucher and Justin Friesen

Aaron C. Kay

University of Waterloo

Duke University

Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) contends that institutional-level mechanisms exist
that reinforce and perpetuate existing group-based inequalities, but very few such mechanisms have been
empirically demonstrated. We propose that gendered wording (i.e., masculine- and feminine-themed
words, such as those associated with gender stereotypes) may be a heretofore unacknowledged,
institutional-level mechanism of inequality maintenance. Employing both archival and experimental
analyses, the present research demonstrates that gendered wording commonly employed in job recruitment materials can maintain gender inequality in traditionally male-dominated occupations. Studies 1 and2 demonstrated the existence of subtle but systematic wording differences within a randomly sampled setof job advertisements. Results indicated that job advertisements for male-dominated areas employed
greater masculine wording (i.e., words associated with male stereotypes, such as leader, competitive,
dominant) than advertisements within female-dominated areas. No difference in the presence of feminine
wording (i.e., words associated with female stereotypes, such as support, understand, interpersonal)
emerged across male- and female-dominated areas. Next, the consequences of highly masculine wording
were tested across 3 experimental studies. When job advertisements were constructed to include moremasculine than feminine wording, participants perceived more men within these occupations (Study 3),
and importantly, women found these jobs less appealing (Studies 4 and 5). Results confirmed thatperceptions of belongingness (but not perceived skills) mediated the effect of gendered wording on job
appeal (Study 5). The function of gendered wording in maintaining traditional gender divisions,
implications for gender parity, and theoretical models of inequality are discussed.
Keywords: inequality, intergroup relations, gender inequality, social dominance, belongingness(U.S. Department of Labor, 2007). Why do women continue to beunderrepresented in these areas?
Individual-level factors that serve to keep women out of maledominated areas are well documented. Such factors manifest
within individuals in the form of beliefs, attitudes, and othermotivated tendencies. For example, system justification research(see Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) has demonstrated that injunctification—people’s tendency to defend thestatus quo via construing whatever currently is as natural anddesirable, and the way that things ought to be (Kay, Gaucher, et al.,2009; Kay & Zanna, 2009)—is an individual-level process that canaccount, at least in part, for women’s continued underrepresentation in male-dominated areas. Female participants who learned
about prevailing inequality (i.e., women’s underrepresentation in
the domains of business and politics) subsequently defended thisinequality as desirable and natural, an effect that was most pronounced when system justification concerns were experimentallyheightened (Kay, Gaucher, et al., 2009).
Likewise, benevolent sexist beliefs (Glick & Fiske, 1996,
2001a, 2001b) and complementary (see Jost & Kay, 2005; Kay etal., 2007) or compensatory (see Kay, Czapliński, & Jost, 2009;
Kervyn, Yzerbyt, Judd, & Nunes, 2009; Napier, Thorisdottir, &Jost, 2010) stereotypes are especially well suited to justify genderinequalities. Endorsing the warm but incompetent stereotype ofhousewives justifies women’s domestic role and exclusion fromthe workplace (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2004; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick,& Xu, 2002). Similarly, the competent but cold stereotype ofDespite widely touted egalitarian ideals, women in North America continue to be underrepresented in many areas of employment
including high levels of business, the natural sciences, and engineering. In Canada, for example, less than 20% of engineering
undergraduates and only 9% of registered professional engineers
are women (Engineers Canada, 2010). A similar picture emerges
in the United States. Women comprise only 2.4% of Fortune 500
chief executive officers (Catalyst, 2008a), 20% of full professors
in the natural sciences (Catalyst, 2008b), and 11% of engineers

This article was published Online First March 7, 2011.
Danielle Gaucher and Justin Friesen, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; Aaron C. Kay, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Fuqua School of Business,
Duke University.
This research was prepared with the support of Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowships toDanielle Gaucher and Justin Friesen and research grants to Aaron C. Kay
from SSHRC and the Ontario Ministry for Innovation. We thank Fatima
Mitchell, Sandra Olheiser, and Gary Waller at Co-operative Education andCareer Services, University of Waterloo, for their valuable assistance with
Study 2.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Danielle
Gaucher, who is now at the Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540-1010, or Justin Friesen, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo,
Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada. E-mail: dgaucher@princeton.edu or
jp2fries@uwaterloo.ca
109

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GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

working women has been used as justification for keeping womenout of (male-dominated) management positions (Fiske, Bersoff,
Borgida, Deaux, & Heilman, 1991; Phelan, Moss-Racusin, &Rudman, 2008; Rudman, 1998; Rudman & Glick, 1999, 2001).
There is much less psychological research, however, documenting the institutional-level contributors to gender inequality.
Institutional-level contributors are those that manifest within thesocial structure itself (e.g., public policy, law). According to social
dominance theory (SDT; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), these
institutional-level mechanisms exist to reinforce and perpetuate
existing group-based inequality. Such contributors are often—
though certainly not always—so deeply embedded within thesocial structure that they are overlooked by society at large(Deutsch, 2006). These types of institutional-level factors remain
highly underresearched (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006).
But despite the difficulty of detecting these systematic or institutional factors, their effects on individual-level psychologicalprocesses are profound (e.g., increased antiegalitarianism, racism,and victim blaming; Haley & Sidanius, 2005). Indeed, as Haleyand Sidanius (2005, p. 189) wrote:
Social hierarchies are in large part created, preserved, and recreatedby social institutions, or organizations. While lone individuals canhelp to strengthen these hierarchies (e.g. by voting in favor of lawsthat disproportionately handicap low-status groups) or to attenuate
them (e.g. by voting in favor of laws that instead help to level theplaying field), institutions should be able to impact hierarchies to a far
greater degree.

In the current research we identify an unacknowledged, institutionlevel factor that may serve to reinforce women’s underrepresentation in traditionally male-dominated occupations: genderedwording used in job recruitment materials. Specifically, we investigate whether masculine-themed words (such as competitive, dominate, and leader) emerge within job advertisements in maledominated areas, and whether the mere presence of thesemasculine words dissuade women from applying to the area because they cue that women do not belong.

Job Advertisements as Institutional-Level
Contributors to Inequality
Women’s attrition in male-dominated fields, it has been proposed, spikes at specific points along the career path, such as
between one’s master of science or master of arts degree anddoctorate, or at hiring and promotion (Holmes & O’Connell, 2007;
Tesch, Wood, Helwig, & Nattinger, 1995). In the geosciences, forexample, 38% of PhD graduates but only 26% of assistant professors are women (Holmes & O’Connell, 2007). It is plausible, then,that institutional-level barriers to women’s participation in maledominated domains occur most prominently at certain criticalpoints. In the present research we focus on job recruitment as oneof those critical points.
Over 30 years ago, Bem and Bem (1973) investigated how job
advertisements that overtly specified a preference for male applicants discouraged women from applying. They found that explicit
references to men as candidates for specific jobs and placing
advertisements in sex-segregated newspaper columns discouraged
men and women from applying to opposite-sex positions. In thefirst of two seminal studies, participants were presented with aseries of job advertisements that were either sex biased (i.e., madeexplicit reference to men as candidates for traditionally maledominated jobs such as lineman and women as candidates for
traditionally female jobs such as stewardess), unbiased (i.e., madereference to both men and women as candidates), or sex reversed(i.e., referred to women as ideal candidates for the typically maledominated jobs and men as ideal candidates for the traditionallyfemale jobs). The results were clear: Women were more interested
in male-dominated jobs when the advertisements were unbiased,making reference to both men and women as candidates, thanwhen the advertisements made reference only to men (Bem &Bem, 1973). Women reported the greatest interest in the maledominated jobs when the advertisements were sex reversed, explicitly referring to women as ideal candidates.
In a second study, female participants were presented with job
advertisements from a U.S. newspaper and asked to rate theirpreference for each job. Half the participants read job advertisements precisely as they appeared in the paper: sex segregatedunder jobs–male and jobs–female columns. The other half read
identical advertisements, but this time they were integrated andlisted alphabetically with no sex labeling. Women preferred maledominated jobs when they were presented in the integrated rather
than the sex-segregated columns. Notably, this finding emerged
despite a disclaimer on both sets of advertisements citing that “jobseekers should assume that the advertiser will consider applicantsof either sex in compliance with the laws against discrimination”(Bem & Bem, 1973, p. 15).
This type of bias in job advertisements, however, likely nolonger exists. On the heels of U.S. civil rights legislation (Title VIIof the 1964 Civil Rights Act) deeming this practice unconstitutional, and the advent of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, explicit sex segregation of advertisements had
abruptly ended by 1973 (Pedriana & Abraham, 2006). As a result,
it is no longer the case that job advertisements deter men or womenfrom applying to specific positions through explicit requests formen or women or use of pronouns such as he or she. To many, thissuggested that this problem was solved.
However, although such explicit references to men or women as
ideal candidates have largely disappeared from the social landscape, it is possible that the gender of the ideal candidate is still
conveyed, but more subtly, through wording in the advertisementthat reflects broader cultural stereotypes about men and women. In
other words, even in the absence of explicit gender-biased directives, masculine and feminine themed words may be differentiallypresent in advertisements for jobs that are typically occupied bymales versus females, and the mere presence of this wording
difference may be sufficient to exert important downstream consequences on individual-level appraisals of the relevant jobs.

The Nature of Subtle Wording Differences in
Job Advertisements
There is an established literature documenting widely held gender stereotypes (e.g., Glick & Fiske, 1996) and differences in theway men and women use everyday language (e.g., Pennebaker,
Mehl, & Niederhoffer, 2003). On the whole, women are perceived
as more communal and interpersonally oriented than men, whereas
men are more readily attributed with traits associated with leadership and agency (Eagly & Karau, 1991; Heilman, 1983; Rudman

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY& Kilianski, 2000). Moreover, gender differences in the linguisticstyle of everyday speech are well documented (Carli, 1990; Lakoff, 1975). Women, for example, use a more communal style ofspeech than men (Brownlow, Rosamond, & Parker, 2003; Haas,
1979; Leaper & Aryes, 2007) and make more references to socialand emotional words (Newman, Groom, Handelman, & Pennebaker, 2008). Language use can also differ based on the gender ofwhom one is writing about. An analysis of recommendation lettersfor university faculty jobs within biology found that writers used
more “standout words” (e.g., outstanding, unique) when describing male than female candidates (Schmader, Whitehead, &Wysocki, 2007). Similarly, Madera, Hebl, and Martin (2009) documented differential language use in recommendation letters foruniversity faculty jobs within psychology. Women were describedas more communal and less agentic than men, suggesting that
language use can unintentionally reflect stereotypical gender roles.
Furthermore, candidates whose letters contained more communal
traits were less likely to be hired, clearly demonstrating that thesegender-based differences in language use perpetuate inequality andare not innocuous.
Drawing from these literatures, we reasoned that genderedwording may emerge within job advertisements as a subtle mechanism of maintaining gender inequality by keeping women out ofmale-dominated jobs. We predict that currently male-dominatedoccupations will contain greater masculine wording in their job
advertisements than advertisements within female-dominated areas. For example, a job advertisement for a company in a maledominated area might, using masculine language, emphasize thecompany’s “dominance” of the marketplace, whereas a company
in a less male-dominated area might, more neutrally, emphasize
the company’s “excellence” in the market. Likewise, a company
within a male-dominated occupation may be searching for someone to “analyze markets to determine appropriate selling prices,”
whereas an advertisement in a less male-dominated occupation
might emphasize “understanding markets to establish appropriate selling prices” in its search. In both cases the job responsibilities are similar, but the phrasing uses a more or lessmasculine wording.

Origins of Gendered Wording Effects Within
Real-World Advertisements
Should we discover the hypothesized emergence of greatermasculine wording within advertisements for male-dominatedfields, two prominent social psychological theories, SDT (Sidanius& Pratto, 2001) and social role theory (SRT; Eagly, 1987), suggest
the mechanisms for how this wording difference may haveemerged. However, although these two theories make some similar
predictions, they also diverge in important respects. SDT statesthat “human societies tend to organize as group-based social
hierarchies” (Pratto et al., 2006, p. 272). One of the primary ways
societies produce and maintain group-based inequality, according
to the theory, is through institutional discrimination. From an SDT
perspective, then, gendered language used in job advertisements
likely serves as a covert institutional practice— one that is very
subtle—that ultimately serves to reinforce existing gender inequality, keeping women out of areas that men (the dominant group)
typically occupy.

111

SRT (Eagly, 1987) takes a different approach. Rather than focus
on gendered wording as an institutional-level mechanism keeping
women out of areas that men typically occupy, SRT posits thatgendered wording may arise from observations of differences inrole-based behavior. According to the theory, as women and men
engaged in traditional roles of homemaker and breadwinner, eachgender came to be associated with traits required of each role (i.e.,
nurturance and agency, respectively). Moreover, as a result of
these “original” gender roles, it is theorized that people enteroccupational areas typically associated with their traditional gender role (e.g., women in nursing or men in firefighting). Thus,
according to SRT, the emergence of gendered words in job advertisements is less the result of a motivated process in the service of
maintaining gender inequality, as SDT would predict, than the
result of an inference-based perceptual process whereby genderedlanguage emerges within advertisements depending on which gender predominates. In other words, given that men are associatedwith agency, if there are many men in a particular field, then traits
associated with men (i.e., agency) should emerge within the wording of the advertisement. Likewise, if there are many women in aparticular field, then traits associated with women (i.e., communion) should be most likely to emerge within the wording of theadvertisement.
Both SRT and SDT, therefore, predict greater masculine wording in male-dominated occupations than in female-dominated occupations, although for different underlying psychological reasons.
They differ, however, in their predictions for feminine wording
and female domains. Because SRT is an inference-based process,it would predict the same type of effect for feminine wording as for
masculine wording: more feminine wording in female-dominatedjobs than in male-dominated jobs. SDT, in contrast, would notnecessarily predict a symmetric effect for masculine and feminine
wording, as the preservation of male dominance is much morepredicated on women being kept out of male domains than on men
being kept out of female domains. Across two naturalistic data sets
we content-coded job advertisements to empirically document
whether a novel institutional barrier to women’s inclusion in
traditionally male-dominated domains exists—that is, whether
gendered wording within real job advertisements emerges. In
addition, examining whether this effect operates symmetrically for
masculine and feminine wording across male- and femaledominated domains may suggest which theory (SDT or SRT)
better accounts for the presence of gendered wording within realworld job advertisements.
Crucially, we also predict that such differences in wording, if
they do in fact exist, may exert important effects on individuallevel judgments that facilitate the maintenance of inequality. Just
as other subtle variations in language can have a causal effect on
people’s behavior and attitudes (e.g., Boroditsky, 2001; Fitzsimons& Kay, 2004; Hoffman & Tchir, 1990; Maass, 1999; Maass, Salvi,
Arcuri, & Semin, 1989; Newcombe & Arnkoff, 1979; Reitsma-van
Rooijen, Semin, & van Leeuwen, 2007), subtle variations in thegendered wording used in advertisements may affect people’s
perception of jobs, such that men and women will find jobs
described in language consistent with their own gender mostappealing precisely because it signals they belong in that occupation. Specifically, we hypothesize that masculine wording likely
signals that there are many men in the field and alerts women to
the possibility that they do not belong.

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Gendered Wording as a Cue of Belongingness
There is ample evidence to suggest that belongingness—feelingthat one fits in with others within a particular domain—affects
people’s achievement motivation specifically and engagement
within a domain more generally, and that it can be signaled by cuesin the environment. Walton and Cohen (2007) provided some of
the most compelling evidence. They found that heightening
Blacks’ and Latinos’ sense of belongingness in academia by normalizing their fears about not fitting in increased Blacks’ andLatinos’ engagement with school, improving their grade point
averages and reducing dropout rates to levels comparable to that of
their White counterparts.
Other research has focused more specifically on the types ofcues that signal safety (i.e., belongingness) for members of underrepresented groups (e.g., Cheryan, Plaut, Davis, & Steele, 2009;
Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein, 2002; Murphy, Steele, &Gross, 2007; Purdie-Vaughns, Steele, Davies, Ditlmann, &Crosby, 2008). Most relevant to the current research, PurdieVaughns et al. (2008) demonstrated that cues that signal devaluation of certain social identities can lead to domain disengagement.
In one study, reading a company newsletter that explicitly mentioned a “color-blind” philosophy but also showed photos suggesting low minority representation led to less trust in and comfort
with the company, suggesting that belongingness can greatly affectpeople’s tendency to approach particular domains.
Certainly, other factors also influence people’s propensity toapproach a domain. For example, practical considerations such as
having the skills required for the job and geographical location
factor into one’s decision to apply for a job. People are more likely
to apply to jobs for which they think they have the skills than forones for which they do not. But given the importance of belongingness for domain engagement specifically (Walton & Cohen,2007) and psychological well-being more generally (Baumeister &Leary, 1995; Ryan & Deci, 2000), we expected anticipated feelings of belongingness (as cued by gendered wording) to predict job
appeal independent of people’s perceptions of their own skill forthat job.

Overview of the Present Research
The present research has three main goals. First, via two largescale naturalistic studies in which we content-coded over 4,000 job
advertisements (Studies 1 and 2), we examine whether genderedwording in job advertisements actually exists. This is the main
objective in Studies 1 and 2. Our main prediction is that we willobserve more masculine-themed words in male-dominated occupations compared with female-dominated occupations, which
would be the type of institutional barrier that might prevent womenfrom entering traditionally male-dominated domains, as would be
predicted by SDT. In addition, by examining the usage offeminine-themed words in male- and female-dominated occupations, we attempt to shed light on whether these wording differences do in fact reflect a means of social dominance or are best
explained by a cognitive inference approach, as would be suggested by SRT.
Second, we examine the effects of gendered wording on individuals’ appraisals of occupations. In keeping with calls for a moresociocultural approach to understanding inequality and oppression(see Adams, Biernat, Branscombe, Crandall, & Wrightsman, 2008;
Deutsch, 2006), the current work directly tests how institutionallevel mechanisms— evident in gendered wording used in job advertisements—interact with individuals’ appraisals of the jobs andperpetuate traditional divisions of labor. To do so, across a seriesof experimental studies, we manipulate the masculine and feminine wording of job advertisements and assess the causal effects ofgendered wording on perceptions of gender diversity, job appeal,
and anticipated feelings of belongingness. Should highly masculine wording cue that women do not belong, and subsequently
make the job less appealing to women, then the current analysis
has important implications for the sex discrimination literature.
Third, we investigate the precise mechanism accounting for
gendered wording effects on job appeal. We hypothesize thatwomen would find jobs with masculinely worded advertisements
less appealing because masculine wording cues lower gender
diversity (Study 3) and signal to women that they do not belong insuch occupations (Studies 4 and 5), but not because they see
themselves as unskilled for the job (Study 5).

Study 1: Wording Differences in a Public Sample of
Online Job Advertisements
To investigate whether gendered wording differences in job
advertisements exist, we conducted two large naturalistic studies.
In Study 1, 493 randomly sampled online job advertisements fromtypically male- and female-dominated occupations were coded forthe use of masculine and feminine words. In keeping with an SDT
perspective, we expected that advertisements within maledominated areas would contain a greater proportion of masculine
wording than advertisements within female-dominated areas. Thiswas our key hypothesis. However, by looking at the extent towhich this effect is mirrored for feminine wording within female
domains, we were also able to rule out an alternative interpretation:that these effects are due to social role inferences rather thanmechanisms of social dominance. If social role processes areunderlying the emergence of gendered language in advertisements,
then we would also expect that advertisements within femaledominated areas to contain more feminine words, compared withmale-dominated occupations, reflecting the greater number ofwomen in these occupations. The lack of such an effect, therefore,
would suggest that SRT processes are likely not at work.1

MethodWe obtained a list of occupations that included the proportion of
women and men in each job area (U.S. Department of Labor,
2007). Next, we identified Canada’s two leading job search websites: monster.ca and workopolis.com. We then selected 11 occupations that were highly male or female dominated and had acorresponding category on both job websites. Based on these two
criteria, 11 occupations were selected for coding. Male-dominated1

It is conceivable that SDT would also predict more feminine wordingin female-dominated areas, but this effect is not critical to an SDT explanation. Without it, the pattern of results would still reflect an SDT effect,
because it is more important to keep subordinates out of dominants’ roles
than to keep dominants from freely choosing their roles. In contrast, SRT
clearly predicts the effect for feminine wording.

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

jobs were plumber (1% women), electrician (2%), mechanic (2%),
engineer (11%), security guard (23%), and computer programmer(26%); female-dominated jobs were administrative assistant(97%), early childhood educator (94%), registered nurse (90%),
bookkeeper (90%), and human resources professional (71%). Using the job titles as search terms, we selected the first advertisements listed for each occupation from both websites, to a maximum of 60 per occupation. This resulted in 493 advertisements(231 representing male-dominated occupations and 262 representing female-dominated occupations; see Table 1). Managerial positions were not collected because of uncertainty about whether
managerial advertisements could be accurately categorized as maleor female dominated.2
As a measure of gendered wording, lists of masculine andfeminine words were created with published lists of agentic andcommunal words (e.g., individualistic, competitive, committed,
supportive; Bartz & Lydon, 2004; Rudman & Kilianski, 2000) andmasculine and feminine trait words (e.g., ambitious, assertive,
compassionate, understanding; Bem, 1974; Hoffman & Hurst,
1990; Schullo & Alperson, 1984; see Appendix A for a complete
list of the words that were coded). This is consistent with previous
research that has examined gender differences in language bycoding for specific words (Newman et al., 2008). Using content
analysis software (Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007), we gave
each advertisement masculine and feminine scores, representing
the percentage of total masculine and feminine words in each. Ascore of 1.5% on masculine wording, for example, indicated that
1.5% of the total words in that advertisement were from the list of
masculine words. Masculine and feminine scores were correlated
but only weakly, r(493) ⫽ .10, p ⫽ .03.

Results and Discussion
Recall that we expected advertisements from male-dominatedoccupations to contain greater masculine than feminine words,
compared with advertisements within female-dominated areas. To
test for this, we conducted a 2 (occupation: male dominated vs.
female dominated) ⫻ 2 (wording: masculine vs. feminine) mixed
model analysis of variance (ANOVA), with wording as the repeated measure. A main effect of wording emerged, F(1, 491) ⫽Table 1
Composition of Coded Advertisements, Study 1
Advertisements
Occupation

N%

Male dominated
Plumber
Electrician
MechanicEngineer
Security guard
Computer programmer
Female dominated
Human resources professional
Bookkeeper
Registered nurse
Early childhood educator
Administrative assistant

231
36
55
14
59
22
45
262
45
55
57
50
55

47
7
11
3
12
4
9
53
9
11
11
10
11

113

24.51, p ⬍ .001, ␩2p ⫽ .048, indicating that advertisements contained more masculine words (M ⫽ 0.83%, SD ⫽ 0.70%) thanfeminine words (M ⫽ 0.63%, SD ⫽ 0.75%). The main effect ofoccupation was marginally significant, F(1, 491) ⫽ 3.02, p ⫽ .08,
␩2p ⫽ .006, suggesting that there tended to be more coded words
within advertisements for male-dominated jobs (M ⫽ 0.77%,
SD ⫽ 0.82%) than for female-dominated jobs (M ⫽ 0.69%, SD ⫽0.65%).
Of greater interest, the predicted Wording ⫻ Job Type interaction emerged, F(1, 491) ⫽ 18.33, p ⬍ .001, ␩2p ⫽ .036 (seeFigure 1). Masculine words were more likely to emerge withinadvertisements for male-dominated jobs (M ⫽ 0.97%, SD ⫽0.81%) than advertisements for female-dominated jobs (M ⫽0.70%, SD ⫽ 0.55%), t(491) ⫽ 4.35, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.40. There
was no difference in the presence of female words across maledominated (M ⫽ 0.57%, SD ⫽ 0.77%) and female-dominatedoccupations (M ⫽ 0.67%, SD ⫽ 0.73%), t(491) ⫽ 1.48, p ⫽ .14,d ⫽ 0.13.
The above analysis confirmed the most straightforward prediction: Job advertisements within male-dominated areas contained
greater masculine wording than advertisements from femaledominated areas. A more nuanced test of the hypothesis, however,is to examine whether differences in wording also vary continuously as a function of the number of men present in the occupation.
Are greater numbers of men in any given occupation associatedwith more masculine and fewer feminine words? Indeed, this was
the case. Across all advertisements, the percentage of men in an
occupation (according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 2007) wasused to predict the percentages of masculine and feminine words
emerging across all the advertisements. More men in an occupation was associated with a greater presence of masculine words,␤ ⫽ .17, t(492) ⫽ 3.74, p ⬍ .05, and a marginally, though notsignificant, lower presence of feminine words, ␤ ⫽ ⫺.19, t(492) ⫽⫺1.90, p ⫽ .06.3

Study 2: Wording Differences in a University Sampleof Co-Op Job Advertisements
Study 1 provided initial evidence that gendered wording in job
advertisements exists. Consistent with both SDT and SRT, advertisements from male-dominated fields contained greater masculine
wording than advertisements from female-dominated fields. Morein keeping with an SDT perspective, however, there was nodifference in the presence of feminine wording across male- andfemale-dominated fields, as an SRT interpretation would suggestthat there should have been. In Studies 3–5, we experimentallyassess the social psychological effects of this type of wording bias.
Before doing so, however, we sought to replicate the findings
using a different sample to ensure that the wording differences thatemerged were not based on something idiosyncratic about theparticular 11 occupations selected in Study 1. To do this, we2
Due to differences in the number of advertisements posted online,
the number of advertisements collected for each occupation varied from
14 to 59.
3
We regressed a ranked variable corresponding to the exact percentage
of men within each occupation (as defined by the U.S. Department ofLabor, 2007) on the masculine wording and feminine wording variables.

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GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

sampled from engineering (n ⫽ 1,682), math and computer science(n ⫽ 920), science (n ⫽ 205), business and economics (n ⫽ 209),
and accounting and financial management (n ⫽ 100). The job
advertisements targeted to typically female-dominated faculties
were from applied health studies (n ⫽ 205), arts (n ⫽ 160), andenvironmental studies (n ⫽ 159). All the faculties that wererepresented on the co-op job posting site were included in thepresent analyses. As in Study 1, we coded each advertisement forthe percentage of masculine and feminine words contained in theadvertisement using linguistic software (Pennebaker et al., 2007).
In this sample, masculine and feminine scores were again correlated but only weakly, r(3640) ⫽ .05, p ⫽ .001.

Results
Figure 1. Mean percentage of gendered wording as a function of occupation area (Study 1). Error bars indicate standard error.

randomly sampled job advertisements for university students thatwere targeted at stereotypically male- and female-dominated faculties (e.g., engineering vs. arts, respectively) but that were fromhundreds of employers. The University of Waterloo has the largest
cooperative education program in Canada. Students in the co-op
program alternate between terms of on-campus coursework andoff-campus work placements. Each term hundreds of companies
advertise thousands of student jobs that students can accessthrough a university website. We were granted access to the text
of 3,640 of these job advertisements targeted at six university
faculties.
In contrast to the online advertisements in Study 1, which wereorganized by occupation title (e.g., engineer, plumber), the co-op
job advertisements were organized by university faculty (e.g.,
engineering, arts, applied health sciences). Employers could
choose to target their advertisements to students in engineering,arts, or another faculty. There is generally a correspondence between the faculty targeted and the domain of the job; for example,
jobs targeted at students in the engineering faculty are almost
always within the engineering field, but the job titles themselves
within that faculty varied. By categorizing advertisements by faculty instead of by specific job titles, it ensured that the wording
effects were not particular to jobs titled “engineer” or “computer
programmer” but reflected a general trend within the engineeringor computer science fields. Again, in keeping with SDT and SRT,
we expected to find more masculine wording in advertisements
targeted at students in male-dominated faculties (i.e., from moremale-dominated fields) than in advertisements targeted at students
in female-dominated faculties. Furthermore, on the basis of thefindings from Study 1, we expected to find no difference in theamount of feminine wording found across subject areas.

To test for wording differences, we conducted a 2 (faculty
advertised: male dominated vs. female dominated) ⫻ 2 (wording:masculine vs. feminine wording) mixed model ANOVA, withwording as the repeated measure. A main effect of wording
emerged, F(1, 3638) ⫽ 191.67, p ⬍ .001, ␩2p ⫽ .050, indicatingthat advertisements, overall, contained more masculine words(M ⫽ 1.09%, SD ⫽ 0.88%) than feminine words (M ⫽ 0.67%,
SD ⫽ 0.70%). A main effect of faculty also emerged, F(1, 3638) ⫽18.76, p ⬍ .001, ␩2p ⫽ .005, indicating there were more codedwords within advertisements targeted at male-dominated faculties(M ⫽ 0.90%, SD ⫽ 0.83%) than within advertisements targeted at
female-dominated faculties (M ⫽ 0.78%, SD ⫽ 0.73%).
Of greater interest, once again the predicted Wording ⫻ Job
Type interaction emerged, F(1, 3638) ⫽ 14.76, p ⬍ .001, ␩2p ⫽.004 (see Figure 2). As expected, there was a greater percentage ofmasculine words within advertisements for male-dominated faculties (M ⫽ 1.12%, SD ⫽ 0.89%) than within advertisements forfemale-dominated faculties (M ⫽ 0.91%, SD ⫽ 0.76%), t(3638) ⫽5.23, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.24. There was no difference in the presenceof feminine words between male-dominated (M ⫽ 0.67%, SD ⫽0.70%) and female-dominated faculties (M ⫽ 0.65%, SD ⫽0.68%), t(3638) ⫽ 0.56, p ⫽ .56, d ⫽ 0.03.

Discussion: Studies 1 and 2
Across two independent samples, job advertisements for maledominated occupations contained more stereotypically masculine

MethodJob advertisements (N ⫽ 3,640) were randomly selected fromthe on-campus co-operative job posting site at the University ofWaterloo. Given the university’s emphasis on engineering, math,and computer science programs, there were more job advertisements targeted to typically male-dominated faculties (n ⫽ 3,116)
than to typically female-dominated faculties (n ⫽ 524). The job
advertisements targeted to typically male-dominated faculties were

Figure 2. Mean percentage of gendered wording as a function of occupation area (Study 2). Error bars indicate standard error.

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

words than job advertisements for female-dominated occupations.
Furthermore, in both cases there was no difference in the presenceof stereotypically feminine words across male- and femaledominated occupations. This lack of an effect for feminine wording suggests that gendered wording, at least in the current studies,
is not simply the result of a perceptual process whereby people
make inferences about the traits required for jobs based on roles
traditionally held by men and women. Next, we sought to test
whether these types of wording differences affect individual-level
psychological functioning in a way that can lead to the perpetuation of gender divisions. Does the inclusion of more masculine
stereotype-linked words, like the ones we systematically found in
the advertisements for male-dominated jobs, make a given job lessappealing to individual female candidates? Three laboratory experiments (Studies 3–5) tested the causal effects of genderedwording on perceptions of gender diversity, anticipated feelings ofbelongingness, and, ultimately, job appeal.

Study 3: The Effect of Gendered Wording onDiversity Perceptions
In Study 3 participants read a series of job advertisements
manipulated to be masculinely or femininely worded and thenestimated the perceived gender diversity within the various occupations. We created advertisements for traditionally maledominated (engineer, plumber) and female-dominated (registerednurse, administrative assistant) occupations, as well as two neutral
jobs (real estate agent, retail sales manager). The neutral jobs
allowed for testing of gendered wording effects within occupations
not as strongly associated with either gender stereotype. Unsurprisingly, regardless of an advertisement’s wording, people will
likely perceive more men within some occupations (e.g., engineering) than other occupations (e.g., nursing). We hypothesized, however, that gendered wording will have an additional effect, independent from the type of job, such that people would perceive
more men within jobs that were masculinely worded.

MethodForty-three Canadian-born introductory psychology students
participated online (28 women, 15 men; 65% White, 21% Asian,
5% Indian, and 9% other or not listed) in exchange for course
credit.
Using a within-subjects design, we provided each participant
with six job advertisements to read. Two were from each job type(male dominated, female dominated, neutral). Within each job
type, one advertisement used more feminine wording, and theother used more masculine wording. To create the advertisements,
we used common phrases from the advertisements sampled inStudy 1 to create a generic advertisement for each job (70 –115
words). Each included a company description, job description, andqualifications. Wording was manipulated by selectively substituting masculine and feminine words from the lists used in Studies 1
and 2. This resulted in two versions of each advertisement, one
masculinely worded and one femininely worded.4 For example,
the masculinely worded advertisement for a registered nurse
stated, “We are determined to deliver superior medical treatment
tailored to each individual patient,” whereas the femininely
worded advertisement stated, “We are committed to providing top

115

quality health care that is sympathetic to the needs of our patients”(emphasis added). Advertisements are included in Appendix B.
To control for any idiosyncrasies of specific jobs (e.g., a generalpreference for engineering over plumbing) that might be confounded with wording, we counterbalanced across individual occupations. For half the participants, the masculinely worded advertisements were plumber, retail sales manager, and registerednurse (with the three remaining advertisements femininely
worded). For the other half, the masculinely worded advertisements were engineer, real estate agent, and administrative assistant(with the three remaining advertisements femininely worded).
Presentation order was also counterbalanced.
After each advertisement, participants completed two items
assessing their perception of the number of women within eachjob that they read. Specifically, participants were asked, “Howmany women . . .” (a) “work in this company?” and (b) “workin the position being advertised?” on a Likert scale ranging
from 0 (0% women) to 20 (100% women), each point labeled in
5% increments.
Furthermore, after each advertisement participants were asked
which factors had affected their perceptions of that advertisement;
not one participant mentioned wording.

Results and Discussion
To test whether masculine and feminine wording actually affects participants’ perceptions of the gender diversity within each
occupation, we conducted a 3 (job type: male dominated vs.
neutral vs. female dominated) ⫻ 2 (wording: masculine vs. feminine) ⫻ 2 (participant gender: male vs. female) mixed model
ANOVA, with job type and wording as repeated measures andgender between-subjects. First, we report the effects not associatedwith the wording predictions. For ease of interpretation, raw scalescores are also reported as percentages of women in square brackets. A main effect of job type emerged, F(2, 80) ⫽ 199.32, p ⬍.001, ␩2p ⫽ .833, indicating, as expected, that traditionally maledominated occupations were estimated to have fewer women (M ⫽4.27 [20%], SD ⫽ 3.31 [16%]) than neutral (M ⫽ 12.35 [59%],
SD ⫽ 3.03 [14%]), t(80) ⫽ 16.12, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 2.62, andfemale-dominated occupations (M ⫽ 12.35 [59%], SD ⫽ 3.49
[17%]), t(80) ⫽ 16.50, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 2.13. Estimates of neutral
and female-dominated occupations did not differ from one another,t(80) ⫽ 1.19, p ⫽ .24, d ⫽ 0.00. This main effect, however, wasqualified by a significant Job Type ⫻ Gender interaction, F(2,80) ⫽ 5.00, p ⬍ .05, ␩2p ⫽ .011, reflecting the tendency for female
participants (M ⫽ 13.20 [63%], SD ⫽ 2.83 [13%]) to estimate
greater numbers of women in neutral occupations than estimatedby male participants (M ⫽ 10.64 [51%], SD ⫽ 2.73 [13%]; see
Table 2).
Of most relevance, the predicted wording main effect also
emerged, F(1, 40) ⫽ 10.40, p ⫽ .02, ␩2p ⫽ .206. People perceived
4
As a manipulation check, each advertisement was coded with the sameprocedure as in Studies 1 and 2, confirming that the six masculinely
worded advertisements had more masculine (M ⫽ 8.40%, SD ⫽ 1.75%)
than feminine words (M ⫽ 0.00%, SD ⫽ 0.00%), t(5) ⫽ 12.41, p ⬍ .05,
and the six femininely worded advertisements had more feminine (M ⫽6.86%, SD ⫽ 1.67%) than masculine words (M ⫽ 0.15%, SD ⫽ 0.36%),t(5) ⫽ 8.45, p ⬍ .05.

GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

116

fewer women within the occupations advertised with masculine
wording (M ⫽ 9.06 [43%], SD ⫽ 4.80 [23%]) than occupations
advertised with feminine wording (M ⫽ 10.26 [49%], SD ⫽ 5.20
[25%]). Wording did not interact with gender or job type (ps ⬎.10), which suggests that participants perceived more men withinjobs that had masculinely worded advertisements than jobs that
had femininely worded advertisements, regardless of participant
gender or whether that occupation was traditionally male or female
dominated.

Study 4: Job Appeal and Belongingness
In Studies 1 and 2 we found that male-dominated jobs tend to
employ more masculine wording in their recruitment materials.
Study 3 demonstrated that these wording differences may not be
entirely innocuous: Masculine wording led people to predict that
there are relatively more men within the relevant occupation. In
Study 4 we investigated another consequence of gendered wording, one that is more crucial in order for these institutional-levelbiases to actually maintain gender inequality: that of job appeal.
We hypothesized that masculine wording may actually reduce
women’s interest in a job because it signals to them that they may
not belong. To test this hypothesis, we used the same experimental
materials as in Study 3. This time, however, rather than assess
people’s perception of the number of women in a given occupation, we assessed job appeal and anticipated belongingness.

MethodOne hundred and two English-fluent introductory psychology
students participated online for course credit. Six were excluded(four failed to specify their gender, and two were outliers), leaving
96 participants (63 women, 33 men; 45% White, 31% Asian, 10%
Indian, and 13% other or not listed).
Using the same job advertisements and within-subjects design
as in Study 3, we gave each participant six job advertisements toread. As in Study 3, presentation order was counterbalanced. There
was no effect of order.
After each advertisement participants completed six items assessing job appeal (“This job is appealing”; “I think I could enjoy
this job”; “This is not a job I would want,” reverse coded; “Thiscompany would be a good employer”; “This job looks interesting”;

Table 2
Perceived Gender Diversity Within Occupations as a Functionof Participant Sex, Study 3
GenderFemale
M
SD
Male
M
SD

Male-dominatedoccupations

Neutraloccupations

Female-dominatedoccupations

4.46a (21%)
3.50 (17%)

13.20b (63%)
2.83 (13%)

12.26b (58%)
3.47 (17%)

3.93a (19%)
3.05 (15%)

10.64b (51%)
2.73 (13%)

12.54c (60%)
3.59 (17%)

Note. Means and standard deviations reflect the 21-point scale seen byparticipants. For ease of interpretation, raw scale scores are also reported inparentheses as percentages of women. Within rows, different subscripts
indicate means differ (p ⬍ .05) by least significant difference test.

and “This company seems like a great place to work”; alphas
ranged from .90 to .94 for each advertisement). Four items assessing anticipated belongingness (“I could fit in well at this company”; “I’m similar to the people who work in this career”; “Myvalues and this company’s values are similar”; and “The type of
people who would apply for this job are very different from me,”reverse coded). The four-item measure of belongingness was created by adapting items from Walton and Cohen’s (2007) Belongingness Scale, making them specific to the occupational domain.
Items 1–3 were virtually identical to items used by Walton and
Cohen (2007). Item 4 was designed to more fully assess thesimilarity component of belongingness. All four items showed
good reliabilities, with alphas ranging from .80 to .86 for eachadvertisement. All items used a Likert scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Last, after reading all the advertisements, participants ranked
them from most appealing to least appealing. Finally, as in Study3, after each advertisement participants were asked which factors
had affected their perceptions of that advertisement; not one participant mentioned wording.
We predicted a Wording ⫻ Gender interaction, in which women
judge masculinely worded jobs less appealing than femininely
worded jobs. For men, there are two possibilities. On the one hand,
they might show the opposite pattern and prefer masculinely
worded jobs to femininely worded jobs. On the other hand, higher
status groups—such as men—might be less concerned with cues ofbelongingness because of their already secure high status in thegender hierarchy. Thus, gendered wording may not affect men’s
job appeal ratings. We also tested whether gendered wording
effects on job appeal are driven, at least in part, by expected
belongingness.

Results
Subsequent analyses used a 3 (job type: male dominated vs.
neutral vs. female dominated) ⫻ 2 (wording: masculine vs. feminine) ⫻ 2 (participant gender: male vs. female) mixed measures
ANOVA, with job type and wording as repeated measures andgender between-subjects.
Job appeal: Likert ratings. First we report analyses that are
not central to our main hypotheses. A main effect of job typeemerged, F(2, 188) ⫽ 4.57, p ⫽ .01, ␩2p ⫽ .046. In general,male-dominated occupations were less appealing (M ⫽ 4.07, SD ⫽1.45) than either neutral (M ⫽ 4.50, SD ⫽ 1.30), t(188) ⫽ 2.57,
p ⫽ .02, d ⫽ 0.33, or female-dominated occupations (M ⫽ 4.50,
SD ⫽ 1.39), t(188) ⫽ 2.71, p ⫽ .009, d ⫽ 0.34. Appeal ratings ofthe neutral and female-dominated occupations did not differ fromone another (t ⬍ 1). No other main effects emerged.
Of primary importance, the predicted Wording ⫻ Gender interaction emerged, F(1, 94) ⫽ 9.70, p ⫽ .002, ␩2p ⫽ .094 (seeFigure 3). Women found occupations that were masculinely
worded less appealing (M ⫽ 4.16, SD ⫽ 1.41) than femininely
worded occupations (M ⫽ 4.50, SD ⫽ 1.42), F(1, 62) ⫽ 6.74, p ⫽.01, ␩2p ⫽ .098. Men only marginally showed the opposite pattern,tending to rate masculinely worded advertisements (M ⫽ 4.61,
SD ⫽ 1.34) as more appealing than femininely worded advertisements (M ⫽ 4.22, SD ⫽ 1.29), F(1, 32) ⫽ 3.58, p ⫽ .07, ␩2p ⫽.100. Did the effect of wording vary between job types (traditionally male vs. female)? The absence of a three-way interaction (F ⬍GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

1) suggests no; regardless of whether the occupations were traditionally more male or female dominated, participants found jobs
most attractive when there was a match between their gender andthe gendered wording used in the advertisement.
Job appeal: Relative rankings. Rankings were coded so thathigher rankings indicated more appeal (e.g., 6 indicated the mostappealing job, 1 indicated the least appealing).5 A main effect ofjob type emerged, F(2, 180) ⫽ 9.45, p ⬍ .05, ␩p2 ⫽ .095.
Participants ranked male-dominated occupations as less appealing(M ⫽ 2.88, SD ⫽ 1.62) than neutral (M ⫽ 3.80, SD ⫽ 1.59),
t(180) ⫽ 4.00, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.61, and female-dominated occupations (M ⫽ 3.82, SD ⫽ 1.75), t(180) ⫽ 4.17, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.53.
This effect was qualified by a significant Job Type ⫻ Genderinteraction, F(2, 180) ⫽ 7.21, p ⫽ .001, ␩2p ⫽ .074, indicating thatwomen ranked male-dominated jobs (M ⫽ 2.58, SD ⫽ 1.49) lower
than neutral (M ⫽ 3.97, SD ⫽ 1.57), t(118) ⫽ 6.40, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽0.86, and female-dominated jobs (M ⫽ 3.95, SD ⫽ 1.70), t(118) ⫽6.73, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.82, whereas appeal rankings of the neutral
and female-dominated occupations did not differ from one another(t ⬍ 1). Men ranked all three job types equally (Mmale ⫽ 3.44,
SD ⫽ 1.73; Mneutral ⫽ 3.50, SD ⫽ 1.61; Mfemale ⫽ 3.56, SD ⫽1.82; all ts ⬍ 1).
Importantly, the predicted Wording ⫻ Gender interaction again
emerged, F(1, 90) ⫽ 8.68, p ⫽ .004, ␩2p ⫽ .088. Women ranked
masculinely worded jobs less favorably (M ⫽ 3.25, SD ⫽ 1.74)
than femininely worded jobs (M ⫽ 3.75, SD ⫽ 1.64), F(1, 59) ⫽7.74, p ⫽ .007, ␩2p ⫽ .120. For men there was a nonsignificant
opposite trend, to prefer masculinely worded jobs (M ⫽ 3.75,
SD ⫽ 1.78) over femininely worded jobs (M ⫽ 3.25, SD ⫽ 1.61),
F(1, 31) ⫽ 2.43, p ⫽ .13, ␩2p ⫽ .073.
Belongingness. First we report analyses not central to ourmain hypotheses. A main effect of job type emerged, F(2, 188) ⫽4.84, p ⫽ .009, ␩2p ⫽ .049, so that, overall, less anticipatedbelongingness was reported in neutral and male-dominated jobs
than in female-dominated jobs, but this was qualified by a marginally significant Job Type ⫻ Gender interaction, F(2, 188) ⫽2.86, p ⫽ .06, ␩2p ⫽ .029, so that only women anticipated lessbelongingness within male-dominated occupations, whereas men
showed no differences. Means and follow-up tests are reported inTable 3.
Most relevant to the main hypothesis, the predicted Wording ⫻Gender interaction emerged, F(1, 94) ⫽ 6.16, p ⫽ .02, ␩2p ⫽ .061.

117

Table 3Belongingness as a Function of Participant Sex and Job Type,
Study 4
Maledominatedoccupations

Neutraloccupations

Femaledominatedoccupations

Gender

M

SD

M

SD

M

SD

Female
Male

3.79a
4.10b

1.31
1.24

4.24b
3.95b

1.28
1.15

4.41b
4.28b

1.33
1.32

Note. Within rows, different subscripts indicate means differ (p ⬍ .05)
by least significant difference test, on a scale of 1 to 7.

Women reported greater anticipated belongingness within occupations that were femininely than masculinely worded (M ⫽ 4.31,
SD ⫽ 1.35 vs. M ⫽ 3.98, SD ⫽ 1.29, respectively), F(1, 62) ⫽6.35, p ⫽ .01, ␩2p ⫽ .093. For men, there was no effect of genderedwording, with no difference between femininely and masculinely
worded occupations (M ⫽ 3.99, SD ⫽ 1.16 vs. M ⫽ 4.23, SD ⫽1.31, respectively; p ⬎ .22).
Women found femininely worded advertisements more appealing than masculinely worded advertisements. Next we tested
whether this difference in belongingness drove the observed differences in appeal. Because this is a within-subjects design, difference scores were calculated for job appeal (Likert ratings) andanticipated belongingness by subtracting the mean rating for femininely worded advertisements from the mean rating for masculinely worded advertisements (following Judd, Kenny, & McClelland, 2001). Therefore, for both difference scores a higher
value indicated a preference (i.e., more appeal or more belongingness) for masculinely worded jobs over femininely worded jobs.
We tested mediation using structural equation modeling (AMOS
16.0) and the procedures outlined in Sadler, Ethier, and Woody (inpress); MacKinnon, Lockwood, and Williams (2004); and Shrout
and Bolger (2002). Using 5,000 bootstrapped samples, we calculated path estimates and bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals(CIs) of the indirect effect of gender on job appeal via belongingness. Gender (dummy coded: female ⫽ 1, male ⫽ 0) predicted theanticipated belongingness difference score (␤ ⫽ ⫺.25, p ⫽ .01), sothat women anticipated less belongingness within the jobs advertised with masculine wording. This reduction in perceived belongingness predicted less job appeal (␤ ⫽ .72, p ⬍ .001) and was asignificant indirect effect (␤ ⫽ ⫺.18, 95% CI [⫺.04, ⫺.32], p ⫽.02). Because the 95% CI of the indirect effect did not include
zero, we can be confident (␣ ⫽ .05) that the women foundmasculinely worded advertisements less appealing, at least in part,
because of the corresponding decrease in anticipated belongingness.

Discussion
Beyond affecting people’s perception of gender diversity within
an occupation (Study 3), increases in masculine wording were

Figure 3. Job appeal as a function of gendered wording and participant
gender (Study 4), on a scale of 1 to 7. Error bars represent standard error.

5
For the relative rankings, four additional participants were excluded
because they ranked the same job multiple times (e.g., as both first andthird).

118

GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

sufficient to decrease women’s job appeal ratings and their anticipated belongingness in specific occupations. Men displayed onlya slight preference for masculinely worded advertisements, andgendered wording did not affect men’s anticipated feelings ofbelongingness. This latter finding supports our contention thatmasculine wording reflected in real job advertisements primarily
serves to keep women out of the areas that men typically occupy.
In contrast, women were deterred from masculinely worded jobs,
finding them less appealing, compared with the same types of jobs
advertised with feminine wording. These effects occurred bothwhen the jobs were evaluated independently (in the case of the job
appeal Likert measure) and, more strongly, when participants
explicitly compared them with one another (the job appeal ranking
measure). Strikingly, the type of job that women read about (i.e.,engineer, real estate broker, nurse) did not interact with wording.
Across all types of jobs, women ranked jobs more negatively when
they were written with masculine wording.
In addition, women anticipated less belongingness in jobs thatwere masculinely worded, and these changes in anticipated belongingness mediated the effects on appeal. Thus, this study also
provides evidence for the hypothesis that masculine wording is
unappealing to women precisely because it conveys that they may
not belong in that job. In Study 5 we sought further evidence forthis hypothesis and sought to rule out a potential alternative driverof the observed effects.

Study 5: The Effect of Gendered Wording on Job
Appeal, Personal Skill, and Belongingness
Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated the effects of gendered wording
on job appeal and suggested that perceptions of gender diversity
and anticipated belongingness may be driving those effects. However, despite the general importance of belongingness (Baumeister& Leary, 1995; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Walton & Cohen, 2007), it
may not be the sole driver of gendered wording effects. One could
argue that the manipulation of gendered wording changed thequalifications that people think are necessary for the job and thatthese differences in qualifications and skills, in turn, affected theappeal of the various occupations. Masculine wording, for example, may cue that different skills or training are required for thejob, and this assessment subsequently makes the job less appealing. This alternative account would suggest that the effects ofgendered wording on job appeal are not necessarily driven bypsychological variables (such as belongingness) that are ultimately
irrelevant to a job’s objective tasks, as we have proposed here, but
are instead due to logical assessments of whether one’s personal
skills match the job’s requirements. Thus, in Study 5 items assessing whether people thought that they have the personal ability andskills to perform each job (assuming they met the education andexperience requirements) were added, ensuring that anticipatedbelongingness remains a significant contributor even when controlling for perceived skill.
In Study 5 we assessed the effects of gendered wording on
gender diversity, belongingness, personal skills, and job appeal
using a between-subjects design, rather than the within-subjects
design used in Studies 3 and 4, and within a domain that does nothave strong preexisting norms about which gender has the best
skills for the job. Given our primary interest in how genderedwording affects women’s perceptions of jobs and our focus onwhether gendered wording can affect women’s appraisals of jobs
in areas without strong preexisting gender stereotypes, we recruited all female participants in the current study. Here female
participants read just one of two advertisements, for a real estateagent, that was either masculinely or femininely worded. Next,
they responded to items assessing gender diversity, belongingness,
personal skill, and job appeal. The real estate agent advertisement
was an ideal context to test whether the effects of genderedwording are strong enough to women’s appeal ratings of jobs evenin the absence of strong predetermined norms about who best
belongs or has the skills necessary for that job. We expected
women to rate the real estate job as less appealing when it was
masculinely than femininely worded, and for this effect to be
mediated by anticipated belongingness.

MethodOne hundred and eighteen Canadian-born introductory psychology students participated online in exchange for course credit.
Participants were all female (65% White, 15% Asian, 8% Indian,and 12% other or not listed).
Each participant read one of two real estate agent advertisements previously used in Studies 3 and 4. One version of theadvertisement used more feminine wording, and the other used
more masculine wording (see Appendix B). Participants then completed our dependent measures. First was the index of gender
diversity, which was the same two items used in Study 3: “Howmany women . . .” (a) “work in this company?” and (b) “work in
the position being advertised?” on a Likert scale ranging from 0(0% women) to 10 (100% women), each point labeled in 10%
increments, r(119) ⫽ .44, p ⬍ .001. Next, participants were asked
three items assessing their personal skill for the job (“I could
perform well at this job”; “If I had this job I would definitely
succeed at it”; and “If I had this job there is a good chance I would
fail at it,” reverse coded; ␣ ⫽ .81), belongingness (e.g., “I could fit
in well at this company”; ␣ ⫽ .76), and job appeal (e.g., “This job
is appealing”; ␣ ⫽ .85) on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The anticipated belongingness andjob appeal items were identical to those used in Study 4, andmoderately correlated, r(119) ⫽ .49, p ⬍ .001.

Results and Discussion
All the subsequent analyses used ANOVA with wording (feminine vs. masculine) as a between-subjects factor. As expected,
women perceived fewer women within the masculinely than femininely worded real estate advertisements (M ⫽ 4.27 [39%], SD ⫽1.28 [12%] vs. M ⫽ 5.27 [48%], SD ⫽ 1.31 [12%], respectively),F(1, 117) ⫽ 17.83, p ⬍ .001, ␩2p ⫽ .132. Critically, women rated
the real estate agent job as less appealing when it was masculinely
than femininely worded (M ⫽ 3.86, SD ⫽ 1.22 vs. M ⫽ 4.34,
SD ⫽ 1.07, respectively), F(1, 117) ⫽ 5.15, p ⫽ .03, ␩2p ⫽ .042,
and reported less belongingness when it was masculinely thanfemininely worded (M ⫽ 3.71, SD ⫽ 1.04 vs. M ⫽ 4.09, SD ⫽0.89, respectively), F(1, 117) ⫽ 4.42, p ⫽ .04, ␩2p ⫽ .036. Wordingof the advertisement did not affect women’s perceived level of
personal skill required for the job (Mmasculine ⫽ 4.89, SD ⫽ 1.29;
Mfeminine ⫽ 4.99, SD ⫽ 1.09; F ⬍ 1).

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

To test whether feelings of anticipated belongingness mediatedthe effect of gendered wording on job appeal, we again usedstructural equation modeling (AMOS 16.0) and the procedures
outlined in Sadler et al. (in press), MacKinnon et al. (2004), andShrout and Bolger (2002). We tested the model shown in Figure 4:
the effect of wording on job appeal using anticipated belongingness and perceived skill as simultaneous mediators (5,000 bootstrapped samples). Controlling for perceived skill, advertisement
wording (dummy coded: feminine wording ⫽ 0, masculine wording ⫽ 1) predicted anticipated belongingness (␤ ⫽ ⫺.19, p ⫽ .04),
so that women anticipated less belongingness within the jobs
advertised with masculine wording. This reduction in perceived
belongingness predicted less job appeal (␤ ⫽ .67, p ⬍ .001). Withbias-corrected 95% CIs, the indirect effect of advertisement wording on appeal via belongingness was significant (␤ ⫽ ⫺.13, 95%
CI [⫺.01, ⫺.24], p ⫽ .03). Again, women found masculinely
worded advertisements less appealing, at least in part, because of
the corresponding decrease in anticipated belongingness.
The perceived skill measure was associated with job appeal,suggesting that it was an adequately reliable measure, but its
mediating effect was not significant. That is, women who reported
that they had the personal skill needed for a job did find it more
appealing, but their ratings of personal skill were not affected bygendered wording. These results are consistent with the hypothesisthat gendered wording signals who belongs and who does not, andthis, in part, affects the appeal of a job, independent of whether one
perceives one has the personal skill to perform that job.6

General Discussion
The results of these studies demonstrate that masculine wordingin job advertisements leads to less anticipated belongingness andjob interest among women, which, we propose, likely perpetuates
gender inequality in male-dominated fields. Study 1, a large-scale
naturalistic study, demonstrated that advertisements for maledominated jobs contained greater masculine wording than advertisements for female-dominated jobs. Study 2 replicated this wording effect in a different context: Advertisements posted within
faculties associated with male-dominated fields contained moremasculine wording than advertisements posted within faculties
associated with female-dominated fields. No difference in thepresence of feminine wording between male- and femaledominated occupations emerge in either Study 1 or Study 2, and119

we hypothesize such differences should have been found if socialrole processes were driving the emergence of gendered wording.
Rather, the pattern of results across Studies 1 and 2 is more
supportive of a social dominance perspective, which predicts anasymmetric pattern of wording differences.
Moreover, at the individual level, masculine wording affected
women’s appraisals of the job, suggesting that the wording differences found at an institutional level in Studies 1 and 2 have theability to affect individuals in a way that maintains gender inequality in numerous fields. In Studies 3–5 jobs advertised with masculine wording were seen as less gender diverse, and women foundthose jobs less appealing, compared with jobs advertised withfeminine wording. This effect occurred, at least in part, because
women anticipated less belongingness in the positions advertisedwith the masculinely worded descriptions (Studies 4 and 5). Additionally, Study 5 demonstrated that gendered wording did notaffect people’s appraisals of their personal ability to carry out ajob. The effects of gendered wording, therefore, seem to operate
via changes in how much one anticipates belonging in a job andless via an appraisal of whether one has the skill for that job.
Generally, gendered wording had the largest effect on women.
Men were only slightly more likely to find the masculinely worded
jobs more appealing than femininely worded jobs, and there wasno effect of gendered wording on men’s feelings of belongingness
within the occupation. The type of job participants read about (i.e.,engineer, real estate broker, nurse) did not interact with the manipulations. Regardless of the type of job, participants, particularly
women, ranked jobs most highly when they included words thatmatched their gender. Furthermore, not a single participant inpostexperimental debriefings suggested that his or her responses
were influenced by the wording of the advertisements or the extent
to which advertisements included words that conformed to genderstereotypes.

Implications for Social Psychological Theories ofInequality and Sexism
This research documents the existence of a structural mechanism that reflects and reaffirms gender inequality, manifesting
subtly through the language employed in job advertisements, andthus offers unique empirical support for previous theory, mostnotably SDT (Sidanius & Pratto 1999). Of all social psychologicalintergroup theories, SDT articulates most comprehensively howgroup-based hierarchy—such as gender-based division of la-Belongingness
61**
.61

-.19*

Advertisement Wording-.09

Job Appeal(-.21*)-.04.15*
Personal Skills

Figure 4. Standardized path estimates from Study 5 (all female participants). Advertisement wording coded as 1 ⫽ masculine wording and 0 ⫽feminine wording. ⴱ p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

6

To further rule out differences in perceived skill as an alternative
explanation, we let a separate sample of 73 participants (36 women, 37men) read all six advertisements. Participants assessed the training and skill
required for each job, independent of their own ability to perform that job(four items; e.g., “How much skill do you think this job requires?”; alphas
ranged from .70 to .94). There was no effect of wording on skill ratings (allps ⬎ .22). Furthermore, after reading all six advertisements, participants
rated the appeal of each job using one item per job. The appeal effects
found in Studies 4 and 5 were replicated for female participants: We founda significant Wording ⫻ Gender interaction, F(1, 70) ⫽ 5.17, p ⫽ 03,
␩2p ⫽ .07. Women found femininely worded advertisements more appealing (M ⫽ 4.31, SE ⫽ 0.19) than masculinely worded advertisements (M ⫽3.89, SE ⫽ 0.17), F(1, 35) ⫽ 4.53, p ⫽ .04. For men in this sample there
was no effect of wording, F(1, 35) ⫽ 1.01, p ⫽ .32.

120

GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

bor—is maintained through institutional discrimination. Past empirical support for the theory has focused on how institutional
discrimination manifests within specific contexts—such as thecriminal justice system (Sidanius, Liu, Shaw, & Pratto, 1994),
government policy (Pratto, Stallworth, & Conway-Lanz, 1998),
and corporations (Pratto & Espinoza, 2001)—and throughindividual-mediated practices, such as when individuals, acting on
behalf of the state, allow their biased beliefs to influence decisions
or actions they take. The current analysis expands on this pastwork by documenting an institutional-level barrier that does not
solely rely on individual-mediated practices but is ingrained directly into recruitment practices that perpetuate gender divisions.
The current work also demonstrates that SDT-type effects canoperate via mechanisms of belongingness.
Such institutional procedures (i.e., the way that job advertisements are written) likely have a discriminatory effect even if there
is no discriminatory intent. To be clear, it is unlikely that genderedwording is deliberately infused in advertisements. Unlike in the
1960s when employers advertised specifically for men, today
many companies have explicit directives, and genuine goals, togender diversify their workplaces. Thus, it is likely that most, if notall, gendered wording emerges through motivational biases that
operate outside people’s awareness. Regardless of whether gendered wording deliberately ends up in advertisements, the naturalistic data suggest that it is common in male-dominated fields, andcontributes to the division of traditional gender roles by dissuading
women’s interest in jobs that are masculine worded.
Our experimental data also suggest that replacing the masculine
wording with parallel feminine wording would increase women’sinterest in those jobs. The consequences of adding feminine wording to real job advertisements, however, may not be so straightforward and direct. There is some evidence that “feminizing” job
descriptions may implicitly introduce requirements for warmth orcommunion and increase discrimination against agentic women,
who are seen as insufficiently “nice” (Rudman & Glick, 1999).
Adding feminine wording to a job advertisement may attract more
female applicants, but what if those applicants are now evaluateddifferently by the people making hiring decisions? It would be
unfortunate if a femininely worded job advertisement generated
more job interest from women generally, but then agentic female
applicants were subsequently less likely to be hired. These considerations make it especially important to systematically andthoroughly investigate the role of gendered wording in the recruitment and hiring process before making strong policy recommendations.
Although Studies 1 and 2 suggest that social dominance processes underlie the emergence of masculine wording in advertisements, both SRT and SDT are useful for explaining gendereddivisions of work more generally. Masculine wording is a barrierthat qualified women face when exploring career options. However, consistent with SRT, widely held gender stereotypes likely
contribute to the fact that women, on average, are less likely thanmen to undertake initial training in highly male-dominated areas.
Focusing on the institutional-level factors contributing to gendereddivisions of work highlights a point of intervention: If stereotypes
arise, at least in part, because of broad differences in role divisions,
as SRT proposes, then changing women’s position in the social
structure may change the stereotype associated with women (seeDiekman & Eagly, 2000). A stereotype of greater female agency

could increase women’s training in currently male-dominated domains. Thus, eliminating the use of incidental masculine wordingin job advertisements may not only increase the numbers of
women in these occupations but change the female stereotype toinclude more agentic traits, leading to greater numbers of womenseeking training in these occupations.
Also noteworthy is the subtlety with which structural contributors to inequality are woven into the system. The mere presence ofmasculine words such as challenge, lead, boast, and active inadvertisements made jobs appear less gender diverse (Study 3) andless appealing to women (Studies 4 and 5), even though thesewords composed a fraction of the total words in the advertisements. This subtlety of gendered wording makes it a particularly
pernicious and potent contributor to inequality. Whereas gendered
pronouns and other explicit references to the gender of a candidate
can be detected by readers, gendered wording, in the way that wehave studied it here, is masked. Not one participant picked up on
gendered language when asked at the end of the studies what
aspects of the advertisements affected his or her opinion about thejob. Instead, participants generally attributed their decisions to
broad attitudes toward the types of careers being advertised. Although these attitudes certainly played a role in their responses,
given that participants were randomly assigned to experimental
condition, wording manipulations also mattered. Consistently finding certain jobs slightly more unappealing over time, without being
aware of the external reasons why, may actually cause some
women to believe that they are uninterested, for intrinsic reasons,in particular types of jobs. This may ultimately lead them awayfrom occupations that they may otherwise have found more intrinsically interesting.
There are clear implications of the present work for sex discrimination literatures. To date, many of the well-documented
barriers to women’s inclusion in traditionally masculine occupations have been studied primarily in evaluation and performancecontexts—and after women have already been hired. Such better
documented barriers include (a) exclusion from informal networking opportunities necessary for promotion (Ibarra, 1992), (b) unwelcoming or patronizing work environments (Dardenne, Dumont,& Bollier, 2007; Vescio, Gervais, Snyder, & Hoover, 2005), (c)double standards for promotion and hiring (Biernat & Kobrynowicz, 1997; Cuddy et al., 2004; Rudman, 1998; Rudman & Glick,1999), (d) attributional rationalizations (Heilman & Haynes,
2005), and (e) underperformance due to stereotype threat (Bell,Spencer, Iserman, & Logel, 2003; Davies & Spencer, 2005). The
current work complements this past work by identifying a subtle
institutional-level barrier operating at the initial recruitment phase.
The current work also comments on self-selection hypotheses
and explanations for women’s career choices. What may appear, atleast at first glance, as gender differences in self-selection ofoccupations is actually influenced, at least in part, by systematic
factors outside the self. It is not only that women are socialized tolike occupations that are thought to require highly feminine traits,
such as nursing, though this is certainly part of the puzzle ofwomen’s underrepresentation. Additionally, as the current work
reveals, subtle cues outside the self are affecting the appeal ofvarious jobs for women. Women and men, for example, may
equally like and desire an engineering job, but highly masculine
wording used in the advertisement reduces women’s appeal of thejob because it cues that women do not belong. Highly masculine

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

wording may cause women to turn away from a job that they may
have otherwise liked because they suspect that they will notbelong, not because they do not think that they have the skills
necessary for the job. In this way, qualified applicants are optingout of jobs that they could perform well. We speculate thatwomen’s reaction to highly masculine wording is likely functional
and adaptive. Forced to overcome barriers to advancement andinclusion within male-dominated occupations, women in thesefields have likely learned that certain environments are more
hostile toward women than others. Being vigilant for cues altering
them to the possibility of future negative experiences is importantfor future occupational success.

Limitations and Future Directions
Although the laboratory is a good place to magnify novel
phenomena, laboratory experiments can raise concerns about external validity. Indeed, the extent to which the stimulus materials
used in Studies 3–5 map onto the real-world findings of Studies 1
and 2 is an issue that is important for evaluating the magnitude of
the current work. Certainly the average presence of masculine andfeminine words in the controlled experimental materials washigher than the average emerging in the real-world advertisements,
yet the written experimental advertisements used in Studies 3–5
were not completely out of bounds according to the real-world
advertisements. The created advertisements contained an averageof approximately 7%– 8% gendered language, whereas the realworld advertisements contained an average of approximately 1%
gendered language. Examining the range of the real-world sample,
however, demonstrates that real-word advertisements can containup to 8% gendered language. Even though such advertisements
may be outliers in these samples, they do exist.
Also, strong manipulations containing a high presence of gendered wording were necessary because experimental participants
had read only one or six advertisements. Actual job seekers typically read dozens, maybe hundreds, of advertisements. Thus the“dose” of gendered language is comparable, whether it is received
as a strong bias across six advertisements or a less strong bias
across 50 advertisements. That said, future work should test theboundary conditions of gendered wording effects and determine
the smallest amount of masculine wording necessary to affectindividual women. Furthermore, although the type of wording
found in male-dominated areas (many masculine words, few feminine words) was replicated in Studies 3–5, the type of wording
found in female-dominated areas (moderate levels of both masculine and feminine words) was not exactly represented in ourlaboratory studies. In the current work we chose to focus on how
women react to the masculine wording typically found in maledominated fields, and whether they might find advertisements
more appealing if they were femininely worded, but future work
should investigate reactions to the more balanced wording typically found in female-dominated areas. Future research should also
identify the important features of masculine wording in determining job appeal (or other effects). For example, the location ofgendered wording within an advertisement may moderate its effect. Gendered wording within the company description (e.g., “We
are a dominant firm”) might affect global perceptions of thecompany as a whole, whereas gendered wording within the description of job duties (e.g., “You will be a dominant sales force”)

121

might affect only perceptions of the job, not perceptions of thecompany more globally. A limitation of the current studies is thatgendered wording was diffused throughout each advertisement andnot designed to test whether there might be different effects indifferent parts of the job advertisement. Also, the current studies
did not examine precisely which words were most powerful indriving gendered wording effects. It is likely that words moststrongly associated with the male stereotype will have the largest
effect than words more weakly associated with the male stereotype.
To understand why women continue to be underrepresented in
traditionally male-dominated fields, it is essential to understandprecisely how institutional-level factors, such as gendered wording, affect the appeal of certain jobs. Understanding institutionallevel factors is also important if one wants to design initiatives orinterventions that will increase gender diversity, or diversity of all
types. There are certainly groups within other domains (such asuniversities) that would like to diversify their membership. For
example, the wording of some recruitment materials, such asuniversity mission statements, may tacitly appeal to people ofdifferent socioeconomic status.
Just as gendered wording is salient to men and women, wording
associated with individualism– collectivism may be salient to people of high and low socioeconomic status. Individualism—thedegree to which an autonomous and unique self is valued over thegroup—is most strongly a characteristic of the White, urban, upper
middle class (Oyserman & Marcus, 1998). As such, words associated with individualism (such as individual and uniqueness) may
be more likely to emerge within the mission statements of highstatus or private universities, compared with the mission statements of lower status or public universities. Just as highly masculine wording makes women feel like they do not belong, highly
individualistic wording within the mission statements of private
universities may subtly cue that members of lower socioeconomic
status groups do not belong and discourage them from applying,apart from other tangible reasons (e.g., tuition costs). Thus, ourfocus on how language perpetuates existing group dominance has
theoretical significance for a host of other domains, not only forgender and occupations. Future work would do well to explore
how language manifesting at the institutional-level inadvertently
serves to maintain existing social arrangements across a number ofdomains.
Finally, there are a few limitations of the current work that areworth noting. Students from a major Canadian university, althoughfrom a broad range of academic majors, were participants in
Studies 3–5. Although in one sense university students are relevant
participants insofar as they do not currently have a job and are all
anticipating applying for one in the near future, one may wonder
whether the current findings would generalize to other demographic groups or to active job applicants. Active job applicants,
for instance, may be more highly committed, or motivated, to geta job in a particular occupation. On the one hand, a high level ofmotivation and commitment could make people more attentive towording cues, in an effort to find the perfect job. On the other
hand, strong motivation and commitment to a specific occupation
could cause people to apply indiscriminately to jobs in an attempt
to ensure that they get at least some job in the field, thus reducing
the strength of gendered wording on people’s appeal judgments.

GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

122

Elucidating such moderators of gendered wording effects is afruitful future direction.
It is also important to note the nature of our dependent variable.
Job appeal was assessed with a six-item measure, showing good
reliability across studies. This measure was reliable for both men
and women, and can be taken as face valid index of the extent towhich a job is appealing. Nonetheless, future work would do wellto include a true behavioral measure.

Conclusion
Social inequality and existing divisions of labor can be maintained and perpetuated in many ways. Individuals and groups holda range of ideologies, belief systems, and stereotypes that justify
the status quo (Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Napier, Mandisodza, Andersen, & Jost, 2006), but individuals need not always be thedriving force. Inequalities can also be reinforced via institutionallevel factors that influence individual judgments and preferencesin such ways that serve to preserve group inequality and theprevailing status quo. Although these institutional-level features
may be less salient or seemingly direct than particular justifying or
hierarchy-enhancing ideologies, and are much less researched,
they are likely just as important in stagnating social change (Haley& Sidanius, 2005). The current research highlights one suchinstitutional-level feature and demonstrates its potential impact on
judgments relevant to the maintenance of inequality. In doing so,
it provides useful advances for our understanding of gender inequality in the workforce. But beyond that, we hope it highlights
the power of looking to features of the social structure— especiallythose that may easily go unnoticed—in helping social psychologists uncover the ways in which social inequality is created,
reinforced, and ultimately maintained.

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125

Appendix A
List of Masculine and Feminine Words Coded in Studies 1 and 2
Masculine words

Feminine words

ActiveAdventurous
Aggressⴱ
Ambitioⴱ
Analyⴱ
AssertⴱAthletⴱAutonomⴱBoastⴱ
Challengⴱ
CompetⴱConfident
Couragⴱ
DecideDecisive
Decisionⴱ
Determinⴱ
Dominant
DominaⴱForceⴱ
GreedyHeadstrong
Hierarchⴱ
HostilⴱImplusive
Independenⴱ
Individualⴱ
Intellectⴱ
Leadⴱ
Logic
Masculine
Objective
OpinionOutspoken
PersistPrincipleⴱ
Reckless
Stubborn
Superior
Self-confidenⴱSelf-sufficienⴱ
Self-relianⴱAffectionate
Childⴱ
Cheerⴱ
CommitⴱCommunal
Compassionⴱ
Connectⴱ
Considerate
Cooperatⴱ
DependⴱEmotionaⴱ
EmpathⴱFeminine
Flatterable
GentleHonestInterpersonalInterdependenⴱInterpersonaⴱ
Kind
Kinship
Loyalⴱ
ModestyNag
NurturⴱPleasantⴱ
PoliteQuietⴱ
ResponⴱSensitivⴱ
Submissive
SupportⴱSympathⴱTenderⴱTogetherⴱ
Trustⴱ
Understandⴱ
Warmⴱ
Whinⴱ
Yieldⴱ

Note. The asterisk denotes the acceptance of all letters, hyphens, or numbers following its appearance.

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126

Appendix B
Job Advertisements Used in Studies 3–5
Feminine

Masculine

EngineerCompany description
Company description• We are a community of engineers who have effective• We are a dominant engineering firm that boasts many
relationships with many satisfied clients.
leading clients.
• We are committed to understanding the engineering• We are determined to stand apart from thesector intimately.
competition.
Qualifications
Qualifications• Proficient oral and written communication skills.
• Strong communication and influencing skills.
• Collaborates well, in a team environment.
• Ability to perform individually in a competitive• Sensitive to clients’ needs, can develop warm client
environment.
relationships.
• Superior ability to satisfy customers and manage• Bachelor of Engineering degree or higher fromcompany’s association with them.
recognized university.
• Bachelor of Engineering degree or higher from• Registered as a Professional Engineer.
recognized university.
• Registered as a Professional Engineer.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities• Provide general support to project teams in a manner• Direct project groups to manage project progress andcomplimentary to the company.
ensure accurate task control.
• Help clients with construction activities.
• Determine compliance with client’s objectives.
• Create quality engineering designs.
• Create quality engineering designs.
PlumberCompany description
Company description• We are a committed provider of dependable plumbing• We are determined company that delivers superior
solutions.
plumbing.
• We have many loyal clients, and deliver honest,• We are proud of our success, and boast an impressive
personal service.
record.
Qualifications
Qualifications• Dependable, with demonstrated commitment to client• Self-reliant, with demonstrated ability to perform
service.
tasks independently.
• Can interpret blueprints and schematics.
• Ability to analyze blueprints and schematics.
• Licensed/certified plumber from recognized• Licensed/certified plumber from recognizedcommunity college or related program.
community college or related program.
• Previous experience an asset.
• Previous experience an asset.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities• Service our clients’ plumbing systems.
• Maintain customers’ plumbing systems.
• Respond to plumbing problems and find innovative• Analyze problems logically and troubleshoot to
repair solutions.
determine needed repairs.
• Collaborate on new building projects, providing• Deliver plumbing expertise on new building projects.
plumbing advice.
Retail sales manager
Company description
Company description• Our hope is to be the best employer in clothing retail• Our ambition is to be the best employer in clothingby providing a pleasant and rewarding employment
retail by delivering a rewarding employment
experience.
experience.
• We nurture and support our employees, expecting that
• We will challenge our employees to be proud of their
they will become committed to their chosen career.
chosen career.
Qualifications
Qualifications• Full-time, flexible availability.
• Full-time, variable availability.
• Cheerful, with excellent communication skills.
• Strong communication skills.
• Capable of working with minimal supervision.
• Ability to work independently.

(Appendices continue)

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127

Appendix B (continued)
Feminine

Masculine

Responsibilities• Can motivate others to reach their potential as
employees.
• You will be the head of our fast-paced store, withfurther opportunities for career development.
• You’ll develop interpersonal skills and understandingof business.
• Be a role model for your store, representing our
exclusive brand.

Responsibilities• Can challenge others to reach their potential as
employees.
• You will be the boss of our fast-paced store, withfurther opportunities career advancement.
• You’ll develop leadership skills and learn businessprinciples.
• Be a leader in your store, representing our exclusive
brand.

Real estate agent
Company description
Company description• Join our sales community! Even if you have no• Take our sales challenge! Even if you have noprevious experience, we will help nurture and develop
previous experience, we will facilitate the acquisition
your sales talents.
of your sales abilities.
• We support our employees with an excellent• We boast a competitive compensation package.
compensation package.
Qualifications
Qualifications• As the ideal candidate, you will have a pleasant• The superior candidate will have a self-confident
attitude, dependable judgment, and be attentive toattitude, decisive judgment, and be detail-oriented.
details.
• Excellent communicator.
• Strong communicator.
• Bilingualism is an asset.
• Bilingualism is an asset.
• Previous background in real estate an asset, but not• Previous background in real estate an asset, but notrequired.
required.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities• Connect with potential clients; being sensitive to their• Recruit potential buyers; determine their interests andneeds, introduce them to properties.
lead them to properties.
• Serve as the connection between your client and each
• Negotiate for your buyer with each property’s seller.
property’s seller.
• Understand real estate markets to establish appropriate• Analyze real estate markets to determine appropriate
selling prices for properties.
selling prices for properties.
Nurse
Company description
Company description• Our hospital serves a community of approximately• The hospital is located within a city of approximately
100,000 people.
100,000 people.
• We are committed to provide top quality health care
• We are determined to deliver superior medicalthat considers the best needs of our patients.
treatment tailored to each individual patient.
Qualifications
Qualifications• Demonstrated ability to respond appropriately• Demonstrated ability to act decisively in emergencies.
emergencies.
• Principled and self-reliant professional with• Caring and compassionate professional with a passion
dedication to the profession.
for the profession.
• Able to work shift work.
• Dependable and willing to work shift work.
• Bachelor of Nursing from recognized university.
• Bachelor of nursing from recognized university.
• Current license with College of Nurses in Ontario as• Current license with College of Nurses in Ontario as aa Registered Nurse.
Registered Nurse.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities• As part of a team, provide health care services to the• In keeping with the hospital’s hierarchy, administerwide variety of community members who come for
medical interventions to the wide variety ofcare.
individuals who require treatment.
• Consider patient symptoms in order to select• Analyze patient symptoms to determine appropriate
appropriate treatment and support.
interventions.
• Collaborate with other care providers, but also able to• Be self-reliant and able work independently, but also
work independently.
able to work on a team.

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128
Appendix B (continued)
Feminine

Masculine

Administrative assistantCompany description
Company description• We are a corporate team dedicated to supporting our• Our organization works to offer every possible
financial clients.
advantage to our banking customers.
• Our company is devoted to providing a great work/life• The company boasts impressive salaries, allowing ourbalance and compensation package.
employees with financial independence.
Qualifications
Qualifications• Experience in providing administrative support• Ability to deal with multiple senior staff in a
services to a team of senior management anddemanding environment and navigate officeunderstand office organization.
hierarchy.
• Polite; sensitive to needs of other employees and• Civil personality; aware of other workers’ andclients.
customers’ requirements.
• Dependable and responsible.
• Independent and self-reliant.
• Capable computer skills.
• Strong computer skills.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities• Support office team and assist with departmental• Organize and monitor office tasks and processes soprocedures so that work progresses more efficiently.
that work progresses more efficiently.
• Connect and develop relationships with a variety of• Able to interface with external parties (e.g., otherclients (e.g., other businesses).
businesses).
• Coordinate incoming and outgoing shipments.
• Control incoming and outgoing shipments.

Received March 31, 2010
Revision received October 13, 2010
Accepted October 15, 2010 䡲